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Thomas Hart Benton: Popular Culture

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© COPYRIGHT by Louise Haven Ashley 2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THOMAS HART BENTON: POPULAR CULTURE AND THE AMERICAN NUDE BY Louise Haven Ashley ABSTRACT My research examines four artworks by the American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton that offer different depictions of the nude and semi-nude female: the America Today (1930-31) mural series, Hollywood (1937-38), Susanna and the Elders (1938) and Persephone (1938-39), all from the 1930s. Benton’s interest in the eroticized female body, influenced by popular culture, is evident in these works. I propose that Benton incorporated the visual cues of pin-ups and “pretty girl” imagery into the iconography of Persephone to create an inherently American nude, so that his American aesthetic might compete with the European tradition. Through a feminist analysis, I will examine the reactions that women and men had, and may have towards the sexualized female body used in advertising, film, and print media during the 1930s. My research concludes after examining Benton’s eroticized interpretation of the originally violent Greek mythology and Apocryphal narratives that inspired Susanna and Persephone. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................... ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS......................................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1 CONTEXTUALIZING BENTON'S INTEREST IN THE EROTICIZED FEMALE BODY........................................................................................ 6 CHAPTER 2 CREATING THE AMERICAN NUDE: AN APPROPRIATION OF 1930S POPULAR CULTURE ................................................................................... 16 CHAPTER 3 MYTH, NAKEDNESS, AND THE MUSEUM: ISSUES OF RAPE AND VOYEURISM IN PERSEPHONE AND SUSANNA.............................................. 34 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................. 47 ILLUSTRATIONS ....................................................................................................................... 50 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................................... 52 iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Thomas Hart Benton, Persephone, 1938-1939, Egg tempera and oil on linen over panel, 72 1/8 x 56 1/16 (183.2 x 142.4 cm), Kansas City, Missouri: The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art.................................................................................................................50 Figure 2: Thomas Hart Benton, Susanna and the Elders, 1938, Egg tempera and oil on canvas mounted on panel, 60 x 42 in. (152.4 x 106.7 cm), San Francisco, California: de Young Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. .................................................50 Figure 3: Thomas Hart Benton, “City Activities with Dance Hall” from the America Today Mural, 1930-1931, Egg tempera with oil glazing over Permalba on a gesso ground on linen mounted to wood panel, 92 x 134 1/2 in. (233.7 x 341.6 cm), New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art...........................................................................................50 Figure 4: Thomas Hart Benton, “City Activities with Subway” From the America Today Mural, 1930-31, Egg tempera with oil glazing over Permalba on a gesso ground on linen mounted to wood panel, 92 x 134 1/2 in. (233.7 x 341.6 cm) New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art...........................................................................................50 Figure 5: Thomas Hart Benton, Hollywood, 1937-1938, Tempera over casein underpainting on canvas mounted on panel, 56 x 84 in (142.2 x 213.4 cm), Kansas City, Missouri: The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art.........................................................................................50 Figure 6: Antonio Allegri da Correggio, Jupiter and Antiope (also called Venus, Satyr and Cupid), 1523-1528, Oil on canvas, 74 x 49 in, Paris, France: The Louvre. ....................50 Figure 7: Rolf (Jack) Armstrong, Venus, 1934, Original location unknown..............................50 Figure 8: Earle K. Bergey, Untitled,1 934-1936. Original location unknown.............................50 Figure 9: Earl Moran, Grin and Bear It, 1937, Illustration for the Combination Door Company. ..........................................................................................................................................50 Figure 10: Earl Moran, Some Baby, 1939, Illustration for Metal Crafters. .................................50 Figure 11: Students and Faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1907, original location unknown.............................................................................................................50 Figure 12: Unknown artist, Billy Rose and a chorus girl pose with Persephone at the Diamond Horseshoe, 1941, original location unknown. .................................................................50 Figure 13: Alfred Eisenstaedt, Thomas Hart Benton Painting the Rape of Persephone, 1938, Gelatin silver print, 10¾ x 9½ in, original location unknown.........................................51 Figure 14: Peter Driben, Untitled, ca. 1940s, original location unknown. ..................................51 iv Figure: 15 Antonio Allegri da Correggio, Jupiter and Io, 1530, Oil on canvas, 163.5 cm × 70.5 cm (64.4 in × 27.8 in), Vienna, Austria: Kunsthistorisches Museum..............................51 Figure: 16 Roy Best, Untitled, ca. 1930-1950, original location unknown.................................51 Figure: 17 Art Frahm, Untitled, ca. 1935-1960, original location unknown...............................51 v INTRODUCTION Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri's own “prodigal son” and patron saint of the rough-and- ready-hard-drinking-artist, is remembered as a clever and boorish man, a painter whose prolific oeuvre has left us with a unique vision of American life. At times prone to pontificating, especially under the influence of drink, and often seduced by fame, Benton remains a curious case whose work and remarks remain multivalent. Benton, like his fellow Regionalists Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, were concerned with establishing an American pictorial tradition through artwork that reflected the American people and landscape. That is, communicating the American experience to viewers by way of “trademark American subject matter” and making it easily accessible, financially and physically, to as many people as possible, not just the educated museum audience.1 While the influence of popular culture upon Benton's work is the linchpin of this study, I am especially interested in Benton's interpretation of the eroticized female body. My thesis examines four artworks by this American Regionalist that represent several different depictions of the nude and semi-nude female: the America Today mural series (1930-31), Hollywood (1937- 38), Susanna and the Elders (1938), and Persephone (1938-39), all pieces from the 1930s. Persephone and Susanna are of special interest, considering their similar compositions and subject matter. While their imagery can be differentiated in complex and disturbing ways, they both participate in a dialogue of oppositional concepts—naked versus nude, art versus obscenity—and prompt viewers to question Benton's interpretation of ancient narratives concerning rape and voyeurism, which he has presented in an eroticized manner. 1 Leo G. Mazow, "Regionalist Radio: Thomas Hart Benton and Art for Your Sake," The Art Bulletin 90, no. 1 (2008): 105. 1 My study of the attitudes toward women in the 1930s aims to reveal the cultural and visual influences that likely fueled Benton's work. Representations of ideal 1930s femininity were available in several forms of popular media, including not only idealized advertising images but also “girlie” cartoons, “cheesecake” imagery, and pin-ups, which each reflected aspects of the societal values, anxieties, and ideas of acceptable (yet constructed) femininity in circulation at the time. Examining the 1930s advent of mass-produced, sexualized female imagery in publications such as Esquire magazine and “pretty girl” artwork from artists like Jack Armstrong, Benton's old friend, has further allowed me to clarify Benton's motivation for appropriating the pin-up. While notable Benton scholars such as Henry Adams and Justin Wolff have recognized the connections between Persephone and the pin-up, it is not yet understood why Benton would turn to such sources, or what his motivations were.2 Throughout this study, I aim to clarify Benton’s possible interests in appropriating the pin-up, proposing that Benton referenced this particular type of imagery to create an inherently American nude—or even a Regionalist nude— in order to further his goal of constructing a truly “American” pictorial tradition. In order to truly equalize himself with the European tradition with which he had broken, I believe Benton needed to create a large scale female nude. Thus, with Persephone, Benton courted high and low culture, owing a debt both to pin-up imagery and to the European nude tradition. For in Persephone, we see a nude reclining not upon a luxurious interior à la Titian, but next to a creek-bed in a bucolic Midwestern landscape. In this painting, Benton sought
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